LONDRES, UK - OSLO,NO

HOST CITY

The fourth (4th) trip was a tale of two cities. The first destination was London, where KANVA team members visited the Bat House designed by Jorgen Johan Tandberg/Yo Murata at the London Wetland Centre. The second stop was in Oslo, to carry out the Prix de Rome workshop at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

LONDON

Walking around the Barbican complex, there are traces of the long history of London; the foundational Roman walls that date the city to be over two (2) millennia in age, the remains of two (2) buildings after the extensive bombing during the war and the visionary regenerative brutalist project which accommodates schools, flats, arts centre and conservatory.

While strolling through the city, one can notice many blue plaques, historical markers indicating a link between a specific location and a renowned person, event or building. The new developments in the King’s Cross neighborhood are adeptly re-using old gasholders, industrial vestiges and grand public buildings.

The Oslo skyline is filled with construction cranes and countless new buildings on the rise, including the new Munch museum and the Oslo National Museum of Arts. A new vision for the waterfront property of Oslo is continually changing the city, which is both inspiring and daunting for some. A positive outcome of the redevelopment are the many public access points to the Oslo fjord, as found in the new residential neighborhood of Sorenga and the grounds of the modern art museum, Astrup Fearnley. The fully accessible roof of the Oslo Opera House offers remarkable views of the city and the surrounding landscape.

HUMAN ACTIONS/IMPACTS ON THE NATURAL LANDSCAPE

KANVA members went to visit to the Berkeley Bat House designed by Jorgen Johan Tandberg and Yo Murata for the London Wetland Centre, a wildlife refuge for a large assortment of birds, amphibians, small mammals and insects. Before being transformed into a wildlife conservation area that promotes biodiversity, the urban site contained four disused reservoirs. Now, visitors from downtown London have access to a completely manmade lush wetland.

Tandberg and Murata won the RIBA international design competition for a Bat House with a proposal that was aesthetically pleasing for visitors and highly functional for the end-user, bats. The house was made from a sustainable material, natural hempcrete and laser-cut spruce plywood. Since its completion in 2005, the inhabitants are seen flying in and out of their one-off residence.

The Vulkan beehive at Mathallen, designed by Snohetta, indicates the necessity to bring more bees into the urban environment and the pollinator passage throughout the city calls for a collective action to ensure a safe place for pollinators, whose global numbers are declining.

WORKSHOP

The fourth workshop was held at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design with Jorgen Johan Tandberg (assistant professor at the institute of architecture) and four (4) talented architectural students, Alvar Aronija (diploma level), Julie Krogstad (master level), Jeannette Hoff (master level), and Louis Gervais (bachelor level). The discussion throughout the day centred on relational interventions, the consequences of actions on built/natural environments, functional ornamentation and critical regionalism.